The Salwar Revolution

Thought to be ‘Muslim’ by some, but originating in the land of the five rivers — Punjab, east and west — the salwar kameez has nearly completed its conquest of the South Asian clothesline. What politicians, diplomats and activists have not been able to do, this piece of stitched cloth has.

Early on in her presidency, Pres-ident Chandrika Kumaratun-ga wore a salwar kameez to a formal occasion. By the next morning, her attire had produced shrill headlines in the Colombo newspapers. How could a Sinhala woman, who, to add insult to injury, happens to be from Kandy, which is least sullied by colonial influences, wear an alien dress, instead of the frilly Kandyan saree? It was tantamount to denigrating the Sinhalese nation.

The building of the nation state in South Asia manifested itself, in quite important ways, in the evolution of official cultural codes, including those concerning national attire. So long as such concepts evolved as a mark of political rebellion against the indignity of cultural dictation by the colonial power, there was little to cavil about. But in the post-independence period, the matter of clothing and attire has become enmeshed in competing communal and ethnic politics, majority-minority stresses and competitive nationalism.

Attire quite frequently is a signpost of identity for social strata, groups and communities. It therefore comes as no surprise that the elite of post-colonial South Asia, in the process of consolidating individual statehoods, felt the need to evolve a national dress. The national dress was meant to become the flag bearer of a unified nation, harking back to tradition as well as reflecting the values of modernity that are deemed to be appropriate to that tradition. But, in a region whose countries host such a multiplicity of communities and plurality of traditions, this begs the question—whose tradition and whose dress?

Not surprisingly, therefore, there is exclusionary politics stamped all over the choice (and imposition) of a national dress, as it often is with national language. What one wears makes one person belong and another feel distanced; an indication of proximity to the power centre to some, as well as a deliberate denial of that very power centre by others who reject the certified standard. The so-called ‘national dress’, the patriotic badge of pride in one’s country and tradition, therefore, becomes all-too-often in itself a source of division and conflict.

Such dress codes are often unwritten, but are not, for that reason, any less mandatory. Imposition of a particular attire necessarily, and in every country of South Asia, will officially exclude a range of attires intrinsic to particular cultural groups. Women in the Indian Foreign Service know they cannot don the salwar kameez for official events, not so much because it is seen as informal but because it is understood to be a Pakistani dress. So where does that leave India’s Punjabis or Muslims? The same is the case with government officials in Pakistan, who are not allowed to wear the sari because it is not seen as Pakistani or Islamic.

Such enforcement of collective codes is not restricted to state institutions alone. Movements that resist the centralising tendencies of unitary states are just as susceptible to the pull of standardisation. Sri Lanka does have a Muslim minority, and before the rise of ethnic violence the Muslim women’s dress was not any different from that of the Jaffna Tamils, and they were not wearing the Kandyan osariya saree. But after the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) ordered the expulsion of Muslims from Jaffna, the community leaders endeavoured to construct a distinct god-fearing Islamic identity, mostly by way of a dress code for women. And so the women took to the veil.

A million sartorial mutinies

But while officialdom and ethnic politics draw markers that divide and regiment in the name of a constructed identity, there are "a million mutinies" that challenge such sectarian impulses. For women, one of the most visible among them is the salwar kameez or the "Punjabi suit". It has emerged as one of the strongest signposts for the identity of South Asian womanhood, a dress which has been accepted by women all over, all of it without planning or consultation. At any South Asian ngo conference, you will find most women participants wearing the salwar/churidar kameez—be they Sri Lankan, Bangladeshi, Nepali, Indian, Pakistani, or even Maldivian. Evidently, the South Asian ngo stratum has transcended the barriers of national and ethnic boundaries to opt for the salwar kameez, as both a convenient dress and signifier of a South Asian female identity.

But it is not just the ngo world that has been swept by the salwar revolution. Its is fast spreading to challenge the orthodoxies of culture, class and fashion, not only in the big cities but also in small townships and villages, and even beyond South Asian shores.

In the deeply stratified Hindu society, upper caste women are required by tradition to wear a saree. In Nepal, there was a time when after marriage no god-fearing caste Hindu woman would wear anything but a saree or its plebian counterpart the plain cotton dhoti. But today the situation is very different, as even upper caste women have taken to the salwar. Working women, in particular, have set the trend and it has now been picked up by the elite classes as well as the labouring poor. The choice seems to lie, first and foremost, in convenience, and the added revolution that Kathmandu women have brought is that when they ride pillion on motorcycles or scooters they sit astride the machine. The salwar kameez is by now ubiquitous not only in Kathamandu, but also in Biratnagar, Nepalgunj or Bharatpur, and it is not only the young who are wearing it any more.

A recent SAARC television capsule, designed to showcase the cultural diversity of the South Asian Seven, highlighted a Dhaka fashion show exhibiting the latest in salwar kameez wear by young Bangladeshi designers. So, the cultural bastion of the fabled Dhakai saree has fallen to the salwar kameez wave! And in the chic circles and among the development set, the Dhakai dupatta has become symbolic of this metamorphosis. On prominent display in the chic Aarong shopping outlets, the shoulder shawl has become all the rage, and is on the shopping list of the South Asian visitor to Dhaka. (Nepal, too, has evolved one of its traditional weaves—called, incidentally, Dhaka—to provide dupattas for Kathmandu’s development set and women on the move.)

On the other side of the Bengal border, the bhadralok of Calcutta lament that their city is fast being taken over by Punjabis, such is the speed with which the salwar has spread. And the unkindest cut comes from their own young women happily slipping into various designs of salwar. The older generation is a bit more hesitant—my Bengali mother-in-law has resisted the salwar invasion largely, I believe, out of the fear of getting accustomed to the comfort and practicality, thereby letting go of a critical aspect of tradition. This, in any case, is what happened with my mother who hails from Multan.

Subversion, renegotiation 

The salwar kameez combines utilitarian and aesthetic virtues, which partly explains its quick spread across boundaries. In contrast to the flowing saree, the maekla chador, or the ghagra, the salwar kameez is a stitched, divided garment that facilitates mobility. The versatile dupatta that goes with it is both functional and decorative. The salwar kameez is therefore seen as eminently practical, democratic and modern—an alternative to appearing either Western or traditional.

There is another reason why the dress appeals to so many women. There is the definite perception of the South Asian salwar kameez wearer as a modern and empowered working woman. At a time when women are emerging more prominently in the public sphere, it is only natural that such an image contributes enormously to the appeal of the salwar kameez, to the detriment of the saree and other forms of dress assigned to women by patriarchal societies. Take a look, again, at Kathmandu’s middle and upper middle class women. Definitely, a part of their leanings towards the salwar had to do with the runaway success of Pakistani serials over the 1990s, which showed self-confident women, beautiful, smart and working in modern professions.

While the salwar epitomised rebellion, howsoever understated, the saree has represented the integrating factor in the modern history of the Subcontinent. It is a versatile wear, worn in different ways — Kandyan, Gujarati, Maharashtrian, Bengali, Parsee, as the maekla chador of Assam or as dhawani in South India. For many women the saree has also opened up windows into the cultural and geographic landscape of the region—South Indian silks from the weavers of Kancheepuram, cotton Chanderis from Madhya Pradesh, fine muslin from Dhaka. The variation in fabric is itself a study in diversity, and Andhra Pradesh alone offers the Dharmavaram, Narayanpet, Gadwal, Pochampalli and Venkatagiri varieties. Indeed, the saree is unique in that a single dress gave rise to a diversity of local expression and spanned a geographic landscape now divided by state and national borders. But the fact is that, increasingly, the saree is being folded away in cupboards, to be pulled out only as a rites-of-passage ceremonial dress.

The salwar’s displacement of the saree, its image as the dress of women liberated from domesticity, as well as the perception of it as a Muslim and Punjabi dress, has contributed to the orthodox reactions it has evoked in parts of India. Rimi Chatterjee, a Calcutta working woman, recalls how her Bengali mother growing up in a traditional Hindu family in Bihar, was forbidden to wear salwar kameez as it was "Musalmani". Ironically, she and her sisters were allowed to wear ‘frocks’, even sleeveless ones, at home though it was always sarees when they went out.

The salwar is thus a subversion. After all, women are projected as physical markers of tradition and community identity. The reaction was therefore bound to be severe. Women’s expansion of cultural choice, implicitly entailing a ‘re-negotiation’ of tradition and identity, has been fiercely contested by the traditional forces. Battles have been fought every inch of the way. Two years ago, a college student, Shalini challenged the unwritten dress code of colleges in West Bengal. She wore a salwar kameez. The then principal of Ashutosh College debarred her. However, in the controversy that followed, public sympathy was with Shalini and the salwar now rules the roost.

Ethnic dress, ethnic stress 

But parallel to this regionwide one-wear—let us call it the salwar kameezisation of South Asia—there are equally robust and even violent affirmations of cultural distinction. In the sporadic re-assertion of community identities, the focus of the male protagonists tends to fall particularly on what the women wear. South Asia’s cycles of ethnic politics does not allow any neutral space for dress. It becomes a way of distinguishing one’s own from the ‘other’.

Writing about his work in Majuli, the island on the Brahmaputra’s midstream in Assam, the social activist Sanjay Ghosh drew attention to the bitter criticism his organisation Urmil drew from militants espousing a separatist identity from mainstream India. The main charge against Ghosh, who was later killed by the ULFA (United Liberation Front of Asom), was that his work undermined indigenous culture. Local women workers and volunteers of the organisation had shed the traditional maekla chador to wear the salwar kameez or jeans, both of which allowed them to ride bicycles to work.

Of course, expediency makes even die-hard ultra-ethnicists relax on tradition, as in the case of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and its need to recruit women cadres. Before the "manpower shortage" hit them, the LTTE’s identity politics was focused on reinforcing the traditional image of the Jaffna Tamil woman in full saree, bound by caste, and ritually sequestered. But their need for mobility—it is hard to conduct guerilla warfare swathed in a saree—freed the LTTE women. Touted as ‘Birds of Freedom’, the female brigades of the LTTE, clad in trousers or salwar kameez, had the unintended effect of sartorially liberating Tamil women as a whole.

The image of Danu, the suicide bomber who assassinated Rajiv Gandhi, has fixed in the mind’s eye the image of the Tamil woman terrorist in salwar kameez. In Sri Lanka, whether you are Sinhala or Tamil, chances are if you are wearing a salwar kameez, the security forces will be extra vigilant. Early this year, in the heavily guarded Fort area of Colombo, a young woman in a salwar kameez was sighted in the evening wandering up and down the avenue. Accosted and searched by security, this suspected Tamil guerilla did not have explosives strapped on her person, ready to detonate. She was actually a Sinhala sex worker from out of town.

In moments of ethnic stress, the dress one wears can become a dangerous identifier of one’s background. Sushobha Barve, a Maharashtrian social activist, still remembers the words of a fellow traveller in the suburban train: "Aaj galat kapre pehan ke ayee hai" (You have worn the wrong clothes today). It was November 1984, and prime minister Indira Gandhi had just been assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards. Waves of anti-Sikh goons were on the loose. And Barve was wearing a salwar kameez. In the compartment were a couple of Sikhs. The mob was dragging them out, bent on killing them, which they did. She tried to stop them, but was instead badly roughed up by fellow passengers who believed she must be a Sikh, perhaps a relative, because of the dress she had on. It was perhaps the fact that she spoke Marathi that spared Barve, but those words, "aaj galat..." haunt her to this day.

It is precisely the meanings that dress conveys which makes the salwar kameez both an expression of choice and an object of disapproval. For us, women of the immediate post-colonial generation, there was the hangover of the Anglo complex, that is, the need to distinguish oneself from ‘chi-chi’ Anglo Indians, and to valourise a nativist ethnic identity, rejecting Western clothes.

Our children, the inheritors of a globalising economy, in which our countries have become the sweatshops of the world’s garment industries, more easily slip in and out of Western as well as ‘nativist’ ethnic clothes. Indeed, the spread of the export-oriented garment industry all over South Asia has made for an explosion in the availability of Western clothes. In Sri Lanka, the step-up for the second and third post-Independence generation, is more likely to be from the skirt to the saree, without the salwar kameez stage in between. Among the culturally differentiated peoples of Northeast India who are largely Christian, or the myriad hill ethnic groups of Nepal, there is a much greater propensity to wear Western clothes.

Which raises the obvious question: Is the salwar’s takeover of the South Asian landscape just a transitional phase, a way station towards the even more free clothing favoured by the West and so easily taken up by the women of Southeast Asia? As the distance from traditional dictates increases, will the demure ladies who still try to protect their ‘modesty’ with the dupatta shawl, fling the salwar away in favour of trousers, skirts and other imported dresses?

The men have long ago given up, of course. To put it differently, all over South Asia the males readily gave up their own national or ethnic attires for the basic shirt and trousers, while shifting the burden of cultural and ethnic sartorial responsibility on the women.

In a whisper then in a rush, as the Subcontinent’s middle and upper class women make their way out of the home and into the marketplace, they will obviously experiment with more than one form of dress. And what they will wear tomorrow is what they would like to be seen in and what is comfortable. The variety of wear is bound to increase. But there is no question that the salwar, while it may have to share cupboard space with an ever-increasing variety of dresses both Oriental and Occidental, will remain a critical aspect of hundreds of millions of South Asian women for a long time to come. Besides, it will always have the pride of place of being the attire that helped in the process of the liberation of the South Asian woman.

Retro-Reaction in Rawalpindi

There are those who have learnt to ‘filter’, and have emerged with a wardrobe which is Western in thought but desi at heart.

by Ayesha Javed Akram

For quite some time now, peo-ple in Pakistan have started believing that fashion can be literally anything. The problem is that it ends up being just a few people’s anything. Most women in Pakistan dress up not the way they want to, but the way others want them to. For a lazy day at home, the BMW Set will inevitably go for faded Levi’s, the Toyota woman might decide on a sleeveless cotton salwar kameez, whilst the 800cc Suzuki owners have probably never experienced something even remotely resembling “a lazy day at home”.

Grandmothers and even some mothers have begun to blush at the mention of how their daughters are dressing up. What the elders cannot comprehend is why their kin has suddenly taken to baring themselves? Though excessive skin exposure is still far from the norm in Pakistan, plunging necklines and seductive designs are fast becoming the accepted dress code at upper crust parties. One fashion journalist refers to this craze for showing skin as “a retro-reaction”—to the opulence Pakistani culture has been praised and, in some cases, condemned for.

What is wrong with opulence, you may ask? Nothing really, but at times Pakistanis have been known to forget that opulence should have its limits; what else would you call a five-day wedding celebration (where the bride is a divorcee and the groom a widower), during which the bride’s mother had a hard time limiting her dresses to five, each costing the equivalent of a honeymoon in Singapore?

Maybe it is the increased exposure to the West (Pakistan does have a large number of Internet and satellite television addicts, and the super-elite travels easily to the West) that has made youngsters develop this distaste for something as anti-West as our culture. Maybe we’re just suffering from a bad case of neo-colonialism. Or maybe (and this is a distinct possibility) all the international bashing that our country’s leaders have been receiving has forced us to downplay our own worth and so blindly follow the West.

But not all are blindly following the West. True there are those who troop to “5th Avenue”, wave wads of cash, and end up with what the shopkeepers confidingly disclose to them (and every other comer) as “the look everyone is sporting this season”. But then there are those who have learnt to filter; they observe Aishwariya’s dress (Rai, not the queen of Nepal), carefully pore over Vogue, turn half an eye to local fashion shows, and end up with a wardrobe that, though Western in thought could easily fool many into thinking that the wearer is a desi at heart.

Amongst these gora mems are those who are truly able to sport this East meets West trend, simply because they themselves are the products of an upbringing that symbolises the union of the Orient and the Occident (in the case of one such family, mother America-born, dad a national capitalist, yearly foreign trips...). Since these people were bred in Urdu but speak English, they can wear this look with all the ease and chic that it deserves.

But this ‘foreign-Pakistani’ look is far too tempting to remain within a limited realm of class. The rebel daughter of the maulvi and the graduate of the madrassa are both drawn to it and end up donning it with no understanding of the philosophy behind this dress code. These are
the women the world sees swapping their burkas for tank tops en route to the US. Many might dub them hypocrites. They shrug and say: “Hey, it’s simpler this way—everyone stays happy including
me.” Happiness, of course, has always been the Pakistani’s foremost priority.

Feminist dupattas

The explosive impact of Western culture via the electronic media has not merely brainwashed natives against their own culture but has also given an almost zealous angle to what has always been a gently murmuring movement—feminism. Feminists in Pakistan face one major hurdle—getting the men to listen to them. Every group of feminists has devised its own method to deal with this problem. There are those who would like to ignore the Pakistani men and what they are up to, and so they concentrate on international seminars and symposia. Their dress-code ranges from carefully faded salwar kameez in-country to tailored Gucci trousers (for meetings abroad).

Then there are the feminists who are interested in getting the native XY on their side as well as gaining the support of the international media. Consequently, their wardrobes host a wide spectrum of salwar kameez, some with chaddars, some with chiffon dupattas and some with neither—to be used according to demands of the time. A much smaller group of feminists believes that the only way to win is to make a statement that gets people (read men) traumatised and foaming at the mouth. They do this by puffing cigarettes, walking with a swagger, and donning spaghetti straps. So who exactly are the feminists of Pakistan? As a reputed local socialist once commented, “At this time, every educated Pakistani woman houses a feminist inside her.” Which might explain why a walk down Lahore’s Liberty Market provides all the above categories in abundance.

Real Armani, fake Paktel

A diverse culture will have its cultural extremists, and so we have ours, mostly among the male half. Some are known by the hold-all term ‘fundamentalist’. Frustrated by joblessness, angered by the lack of opportunities, they start dressing up to suit their moods. Those who turn to god in this time of need are soon seen with turbans or topis on their heads and luxuriant beards, often left untamed for months.

There are also the cultural extremists who turn to women and wine, but manage to emerge with bodies toned at gyms (or kept supple by street cricket), and wardrobes shipped from England. Don’t be surprised if you see a young boy in a silver button-down shirt two sizes too small whip out his own fake Paktel on seeing an Armani-clad man barking into his cellular as he speeds past. Which one is Pakistan? Your guess is as good as mine.

Pakistan too has its share of the middle-class, whose members tread the safe line in both dress and mannerism, but are nevertheless conspicuous by their numbers more than any other attribute. Some claim that it is this middle class that is “the true representative of Pakistan”, but don’t you be fooled. Those who really know this land of the pure will tell you that no one class or group can be representative, which is probably why democracy has it so difficult here.

Perhaps the only fulsome praise that can be lavished upon the men and women of the middle class is that they exhibit more shades of Pakistan than all other classes combined. It is also clear, that it is here that one gets to see why proponents of Hindu-Muslim unity still enjoy a faithful following. In every era of Pakistani fashion, typical Rajasthani attire has always featured in the middle class wardrobe, in part or in whole. In fact currently, there is a craze for anything Rajasthani—from bindis, to henna tattoos, from innovative saree-lehengas to fitted cholis. Indian sarees count amongst those few outfits in our wardrobes that remain evergreen. Weddings in Lahore now come sprinkled with a heavy dose of Bombay.

Maybe I’m being a little too hard on us Pakistanis. It is not as if the transfer of fashion has merely been a one-way traffic. The West has taken more than its share of ideas and inspiration from our side. Madonna and her mehendi tattoos is just one example (though the debate over whether she was inspired by India or Pakistan will probably never be resolved). One of our fashion gurus, designer Rizwan Beyg, once dressed Princess Diana, while Libas’ collection has steadfastly maintained its cult following in London. Tit for tat is what it has become these last few years.

Let’s not please the men

by Durga Pokhrel

My absence from Nepal over the last 17 years allows me to see clearly how much change has overtaken my countrywomen and men during this period in terms of what they wear today and what they have discarded. If I were to allow myself to think like a conservative, middle-aged woman, the change would seem shocking. Fortunately, I may be middle aged but not conservative by a long shot. I therefore am able to gauge the changes without the attitude of a woman frozen in the past. And certainly, the women of Nepal have changed the dress code, and this is obvious in what my mother wore, what I wear, and what my would-be young adult daughter would have worn (I do not have one).

After the editor of Himal asked me to write about the sartorial transformation that has overtaken the kingdom, I asked all of 50 provocatively-dressed young Kathmandu women why they chose to dress the way they did. Was the choice dictated by peer pressure, social demands or a need to display economic wellbeing? I, not conservative at all, did a double-take when, with the exception of one, 49 women replied that they selected their fashions to look “sexy”.

To be more precise, most said that their boyfriends told them they looked sexy if they had a slim body and substantial chests, and those too enhanced by wearing tight, sleeveless, above-the-navel blouses, and tight, under-the-navel pants, dyed hair, heavy make-up, and high-heel shoes. Among these ‘daringly’ dressed girls, only five were from the Bahun, Chettri and Newar groups. Most of the girls came from Indian or British Gurkha families, or of parents engaged in the export-import business. Most were in college, some in high school, others working as secretaries, and a few were “doing nothing”. I met all these young women within the space of a week in various restaurants around Kathmandu.

I wonder how I would dress up if I were in my late teens today. In my own case, I graduated to the saree after I completed my Masters and took up teaching. The saree was the social norm in the 1970s, even the dress code, of a college teacher. That did not mean I stopped wearing kurtas, trousers, or lungis at home. Now, almost 30 years later, with nearly a two-decade sojourn in the US, I even wear Western dresses in public. I am not sure what my mother’s reaction would be to my wardrobe if she were alive, but I would certainly revolt against a boyfriend who insisted that I wear clothes to enhance sexiness. There’s another factor to remember of course—whatever may be his inclinations while romancing, once married the man (now a husband) suddenly becomes more conservative than you are.

The Nepali Congress leader Mangala Devi Singh once told me that when she started a social campaign in the 1950s, asking young women to discard their shawls, she was accused of trying to disturb the social norm. The wedding “Bahiri Saree” (outer saree) of my mother—a mere seven-year-old then—was 40 hath long, all of 20 yards. My youngest aunt’s was only 20 hath long, and she was married at 10. Twenty hath was the standard length for day-to-day use at that time. Back then, there was no custom of wearing petticoats, panties, or bras, but they did wear a ten-hath patuka around their waists to hold their sarees, and also perhaps to support the back during strenuous work. On top of their chaubandi blouse they wore a khasto shawl. Slowly, over time, my mother and aunt came down to 12-hath sarees.

Back to the present—the Kathmandu fashion scene seems to be increasingly dominated by ‘Western’ dresses which would be considered rather unconventional and even risque in the real West. There, politically conscious women have understood that revealing clothes are to be discarded, as they are designed thus by men for women to look sexy. Men enslave women through fashion, and, take it from me, male fashion designers design clothes for the women they do not have to marry.

A year ago, I met a Nepali film actress at a party, and was rudely surprised to see someone else than the pretty Nepali girl in chaubandi-saree, chura-pote, and dhago I expected. Instead, she looked like a newly-arrived New York Hispanic with a cheap-looking midi and moccasin-type boots. When I asked someone from her modest entourage why she was not in a Nepali dress, he said, “What is ‘Nepali’? Everybody wears American clothes in Nepal these days.” Well, perhaps that was an overstatement, but it does seem that he is right to an extent, at least as seen in my own sampling.

On the Kathmandu streets, these days one spots very few women wrapped in the saree, while the kurta suruwal (i.e. the salwar kameez) is ubiquitous. Some kurtas are so long that you can barely see their suruwals. Others are so flappy and long-cut down the side, you never knew you could see so much leg in this dress.

At the other end of  the fashion spectrum from the salwar kameez is the “maxi invasion”. Women engaged in labour, whether it be the kitchen, the bhatti bar-house or the fields, have taken over the Western nightie and made it their own as a day-time working dress. All over Nepal, women spend their days in designs perfected for sleep, and who is to question their choice? The voluminous maxi, after all, is comfortable, an easy slip-on, and if there is one thing it does, it keeps the grasping male at bay by revealing nothing and indicating no
desire.

While women should be left free with their choice, one can make some suggestions to add a dash of colour, class or style, however. For example, it is so easy to convert a maxi into an acceptable public dress. You could either wear a loose chaubandi outside your maxi and shorten the maxi by six inches, or do away with laces and have the platting under the breast rather than above. As far as the kurta is concerned, it should reach just below the knees—not too long, not too tight, not too loose. Women who are too thin or too fat need not wear the churidar shawl. My favorite is the Nepali daura style, knee-high kurta with churidar. And, no matter what kind of sexy, open, half-naked Western dress you choose to wear, with a Dhaka vest on top, you beat the competition to the prize and look sophisticated to boot.

 Whether it be the long-slitted kurta, the halter top or the workhorse maxi/nightie, redesigned or not, in the end it is up to the individual woman of Nepal to decide what she will wear. As long as she is not acting to the dictates of a boyfriend, a husband, the larger male-volent society, or the male designer, she should feel free to wear what she chooses, when she chooses. The last thing she should do is to choose her pahiran to please her man, or men.